Ansible - Get Kernel version using the ansible_kernel fact
by
Jeremy Canfield |
Updated: November 06 2023
| Ansible articles
The ansible_kernel fact can be used to get the Kernel being used by the target system. Take for example the following playbook. Do not set gather_facts: false since ansible_kernel is a gathered fact.
---
- hosts: localhost
tasks:
- debug:
var: ansible_kernel
...
Which should return something like this.
ok: [localhost] => {
"ansible_kernel": "5.14.0-284.30.1.el9_2.x86_64"
}
This should be the same as the uname --kernel-release command output.
~}# uname --kernel-release
5.14.0-284.30.1.el9_2.x86_64
Likewise, on a Red Hat distribution (CentOS, Fedora, Red Hat), this should be similar to the kernel listed in the dnf list or yum list command output.
~]# yum list installed kernel
Installed Packages
kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-477.21.1.el8_8 @rhel-8-for-x86_64-baseos-rpms
kernel.x86_64 4.18.0-477.27.1.el8_8 @rhel-8-for-x86_64-baseos-rpms
kernel.x86_64 5.14.0-284.30.1.el9_2 @System
And for systems that contain the grubby CLI, this should be similar to the kernel returned by the grubby --default-kernel and grubby --default-title output.
~]# grubby --default-kernel
/boot/vmlinuz-5.14.0-284.30.1.el9_2.x86_64
~]# grubby --default-title
Red Hat Enterprise Linux (5.14.0-284.30.1.el9_2.x86_64) 9.2 (Plow)
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